ESPN vs. Yahoo! - Ownership Percentages
by jaymeyer on Dec 14, 2011 8:09 PM EST
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PrintThe idea for this post began when I started reading Dio's Free Agent and Trade Target Posts this year. He uses ESPN ownership percentages and I'm an owner in Yahoo! leagues. The numbers of the two sites seemed to be very different so I thought I needed to take a closer look.
Both have very large populations so we should be seeing pretty similar ownership of players, right? Well ... no. Why? I have no idea. If anybody has any suggestions on why Mikhail Grabovski is owned in 30% more leagues in Yahoo! or Shawn Horcoff is owned in 80% more often in ESPN leagues I'd love to hear it in the comments.
- On average players in ESPN leagues are owned an average of 9% more than in Yahoo! leagues. Maybe the ESPN default leagues have larger roster sizes? Larger leagues use ESPN more often? Not sure.
- ESPN has 124 players who have a 100% ownership. Yahoo! has just seven. The breakdown is below in chart form. In ESPN leagues, 144 players are owned in more than 90% of leagues but it drops down dramatically to just eight between 80 % and 90%. Yahoo! has a similar distribution to ESPN (as you would expect) but much less dramatic.
-More after the jump...
- Top 15 guys who are over owned in ESPN leagues are...
| Name | ESPN % | Yahoo % | Difference |
| Shawn Horcoff | 92 | 12 | 80 |
| Ryan McDonagh | 100 | 24 | 76 |
| Marc-Edouard Vlasic | 91 | 22 | 69 |
| Dan Girardi | 100 | 32 | 68 |
| Dennis Seidenberg | 94 | 26 | 68 |
| Gabriel Landeskog | 91 | 26 | 65 |
| Olli Jokinen | 95 | 30 | 65 |
| T.J. Oshie | 100 | 37 | 63 |
| Michael Del Zotto | 98 | 36 | 62 |
| Jay Bouwmeester | 70 | 9 | 61 |
| Francois Beauchemin | 64 | 6 | 58 |
| Steve Ott | 86 | 28 | 58 |
| Chris Kunitz | 100 | 43 | 57 |
| David Legwand | 84 | 27 | 57 |
| Simon Gagne | 92 | 36 | 56 |
A lot of big ownership numbers on guys I wouldn't expect. Ryan McDonagh is owned in 100% of leagues? What are you ESPN owners smoking? ESPN uses ATOI as one of it's default categories (I believe). This could be a reason for some of the differences but the numbers still seem very bizarre to me.
- Top 15 guys who are over owned in Yahoo! leagues are...
| Name | ESPN % | Yahoo % | Difference |
| Mikhail Grabovski | 23 | 54 | 31 |
| Tyler Myers | 26 | 52 | 26 |
| Tobias Enstrom | 39 | 61 | 22 |
| Tyler Ennis | 15 | 36 | 21 |
| Andrei Markov | 29 | 50 | 21 |
| Lubomir Visnovsky | 62 | 82 | 20 |
| Chris Pronger | 59 | 75 | 16 |
| Curtis Glencross | 2 | 17 | 15 |
| Andrei Kostitsyn | 1 | 15 | 14 |
| Mark Giordano | 33 | 46 | 13 |
| Derick Brassard | 0 | 12 | 12 |
| Tyler Kennedy | 2 | 13 | 11 |
| Patric Hornqvist | 42 | 52 | 10 |
| Victor Hedman | 19 | 28 | 9 |
| Chris Neil | 5 | 14 | 9 |
So what can you take away from this? Ummm... how about ownership numbers aren't as useful as you might have thought. Use that to your advantage when taking trade. "McDonagh is owned in 100% ownership... he's a beast, you definitely want him)". This is particularly true in ESPN leagues were a huge portion of the players are owned in 100% of leagues.
These results are very surprising to me. I did expect the ESPN numbers to be higher but I didn't realize the extent. I was also expecting the players to at least be similarly ranked. If Yahoo! players are a bit wary of Shawn Horcoff wouldn't the ESPN players also be? I don't get it.
I feel like I'm missing something very obvious here explaining the differences... but I've got nothing. Any ideas?
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I don't currently use ESPN
Haven’t since they dropped hockey after the lockout but 1 difference in their standard leagues is the avg time on ice.
Useful for determining who you should favor over another player but as an offensive stat I don’t like it.
by MasterOfPuppets on Dec 14, 2011 9:03 PM EST reply actions
Yeah I noted that in my reasoning. But I didn’t think it’s the reason for all of the differences… do you?
Agree with you completely on ATOI as a category. It’s more about situation rather than ability.
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Type of players
Maybe it has to do with the population of the people using ESPN and Yahoo, more Americans use ESPN than Canadians, who know less about their hockey ;)… lol just joking
I think it has do with the level and dedication of the players between the two sites, where more hardcore fantasy players use yahoo over espn. all my leagues have always been with yahoo last 10 years at least, not sure what others have been using over the last few years. As well the list of the high % variance, are most guy that would get drafted but should not be on a team right now on the way they are playing. To my point, dedicated players would cut those guys right away, while the casual player or the player who doesn’t play just leaves his roster as is – autodrafts etc… I think the same applies to the yahoo reverse variance, as those guys should most likely be on a roster. again just my opinon, could be way off !
So let me get this straight...
More hardcore players use Yahoo because your league is on Yahoo? Not sure your reasoning is very scientific.
I love the Yahoo! vs ESPN debates… gets everybody interested.
I can’t see a reason why hardcore players would choose one over the other. They seem pretty similar if you ask me.
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Great stuff. Jay
Looking at the ownership distribution #s, as Jay notes, it is clear that, on average, ESPN leagues are deeper.
Either roster size or number of teams is larger or both
Therefore, on average, ESPN leagues are going to be more challenging
by Diomedes7 on Dec 14, 2011 11:05 PM EST via mobile reply actions
And therefore require ownership of guys who wouldn’t be on the top three pages of available players on a Yahoo! league…
If we don't get our sauce, we ain't watching the game!
Exactly that doesn’t really explain where there are only nine guys 90-100% owned in ESPN.
If the leagues were deeper we should still see a good amount of guys on the fringes.
My gut tells me something is messed with ESPN’s numbers. There is no way every single ESPN league owns Souray, Jack Johnson, Roy, Steen, Vrbata, McDonagh (all have 100% ownership).
No way are those guys owned in EVERY league. Makes no logical sense. There has to be a few 10 team leagues out there that doesn’t own these guys.
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Yahoo! offers keeper leagues as well. But maybe ESPN has been doing if for longer?
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Hmmm… there has to be something going on there, I don’t see how it’s possible that Horcoff is owned in 92% of leagues and Brassard in 0%???
Maybe Barry Melrose is in charge of calculating these numbers?
Also, am I the only one that doesn’t give a shit about ownership percentages? Jay seems to be in love with them but what do I care what the masses think… hell at least 90% of fantasy GMs out there are going to lose their league this year, so why do I care about what they’re doing?
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by Cam Collingwood on Dec 15, 2011 1:17 AM EST reply actions
actually, on second thought, I’m on to something here… show me just the teams that are winning their leagues and what players they own. So knowing that 25% of teams that are in 1st place in their league currently own Cal Clutterbuck, that’s useful info.
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by Cam Collingwood on Dec 15, 2011 1:29 AM EST up reply actions
Yahoo! does have something
under research you can get to
MVP’s
The table below shows the list of players who appear most often on the top 500 Public League teams and the manager in your league that owns said player
Rotisserie
Player Percent Owner
Jimmy Howard 35.6 Snatchshots
Tim Thomas 34.0 Minnow’s Monsters
Joffrey Lupul 29.0 GO LEAFS GO
Brian Elliott 29.0 Canada’s Fyers
Zdeno Chara 23.2 THE ILLUMINATI
Teemu Selanne 22.6 The Canucks
Tomas Fleischmann 22.4 La La Land
Jonathan Quick 20.4 Broad Street
James Neal 19.0 Snatchshots
Sheldon Souray 19.0 maple leaf
Johan Franzen 18.8 Snatchshots
Kyle Quincey 18.0 Master of Puppets
Steven Stamkos 17.2 King Larry
Kris Versteeg 16.6 Cruisers
Jonathan Toews 16.2 La La Land
Marian Hossa 16.2 maple leaf
Nicklas Lidstrom 15.8 Skate or Die
Tyler Seguin 15.8 Canada’s Fyers
Ryan Smyth 15.6 Cruisers
Claude Giroux 15.4 Kilroy
Of course this is fairly meaningless especially if you have a modified scoring system as I had to go 20 spots to find our pool leader and Claude Giroux but then again Snatchshots is running a close 2nd and he has 3 players in the top 20 then again maple leaf has 2 in top 20 and sits 14 of 16
by MasterOfPuppets on Dec 15, 2011 3:23 AM EST up reply actions
You are absolutely correct
except for the stretch from Oct 15 thru Nov 15 where he had 3+10=13 – 40 SOG in 14GP where he would have been available on the wire for most standard leagues and now they are still holding waiting for the next streak to start to unload him.
In my league he was the 472nd pick and I made the mistake of not trading him in early November. So I am waiting on the Av’s to get better.
So are they better yet?
by MasterOfPuppets on Dec 15, 2011 12:55 PM EST up reply actions
Interesting, I had no idea that was there… guess I haven’t been poking around on yahoo! much lately.
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by Cam Collingwood on Dec 15, 2011 2:50 PM EST up reply actions
I wouldn’t really say I’m a fan but I do take notice of them. If I see a guy with high ownership numbers that I don’t like much I try to shop him… and vice versa.
It works more often than not.
I’m trying for a Couture for Eberle swap… the ownership numbers have my opponent considering it.
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It doesn’t work on me, so don’t even go there.
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by Cam Collingwood on Dec 15, 2011 2:51 PM EST up reply actions
When was the last time we made a trade? It’s been too long.
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Not sure… I probably gave you Kurtis Foster for a stick of gum from an pack of 1983 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Cards… and I won the deal!
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by Cam Collingwood on Dec 15, 2011 6:41 PM EST up reply actions
I was thinking of our Brian Elliott (on Ottawa) for something deal.
I can’t remember what the ‘something’ was but I know I won that deal.
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true… but I was right on Elliott, just a year too early.
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by Cam Collingwood on Dec 16, 2011 12:57 AM EST up reply actions
Way to go!
Let’s hope the same isn’t true of EKane and Kulikov.
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A couple of thoughts from trying out ESPN’s system because they broke out the Auction draft format before yahoo did:
Default doesn’t differentiate between the 3 different forward positions, so some players in deeper positions (like Center) will have higher ownership.
But a big one might be that free agents are by default listed by ownership percentage (or at least I think they are?) so if an owner sees 99% owned McDonagh sitting on the waivers, then he thinks that the majority has it right and picks him up.
I would imagine that
like Yahoo! one would be able to sort players in different ways to find what you need.
I think that they all should only take statistics from pools with at least 90% owner participation and that all stupid owners – for example if your league is a single season league and you still own Nikita Filatov once he has been in Russia for 1 week – your team is placed on the stupid list and nothing you do counts.
I might qualify for that list though because I still have M Paajarvi rostered and he hasn’t been seen all year.
by MasterOfPuppets on Dec 15, 2011 3:42 AM EST up reply actions
Spot on.
Not only are free agents listed by percentage owned as a default, they also have a convenient little % added or dropped right beside their ownership number: 
I know that you have this option available on Yahoo as well, but it’s buried in the research tab as opposed to right out in the open with either green or red numbers on display.
I’ve always viewed this as a ’who’s hot, who’s not’ type of deal where the obvious players that are tearing it up, are going to have high green/positive numbers, thus making owners think that they should pick them up before anyone else in the league does…
It may not seem like much, but it’s a tricky little system that falls more along the lines of a marketing ploy to get owners to buy in on that player before anyone else does.
The ownership change % is useful… only issue is if there are so many guys at 100% that shouldn’t be that high. I guess if you use it as a way to catch players that are trending up, that’s proabably more effective than the other way around.
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by Cam Collingwood on Dec 15, 2011 3:01 PM EST up reply actions
Noise
Another thing that could be causing some of the noise is the pre-set autodrafts, namely the difference between Yahoo!‘s and ESPN’s. I would say that most leagues do an autodraft, and probably a lot of people don’t change the pre-sets. So if Ryan Mcdonagh is on average getting drafted in the last few rounds in ESPN but is pre-set way down the rankings and thus hardly getting drafted at all in Yahoo! it would cause a big difference. Plenty of teams that would be on the “stupid list” would fit into here.
very good point. I wonder what the percentage of teams that aren’t active is??? Are we talking about 50% of teams that don’t make any moves all year… higher? lower?
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by Cam Collingwood on Dec 15, 2011 2:55 PM EST up reply actions
Definitely makes sense but then why is he still at 100%?
It’s not like we’re talking about a few teams that got stuck with him and then forgot to drop him.
EVERY SINGLE LEAGUE in ESPN owns him (apparently)
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I would say that most leagues do an autodraft,
Really?
I have no basis for judging this statement (at all), just strikes me as odd.
I’ve never done an autodraft.
Once in a while we have an owner who has something come up and his team is autodrafted, but everyone else is pumped to be there.
I have no evidence of my statement either, just intuition. Of course everyone who reads this and especially those who post here are a self-selected group who are really into fantasy hockey, and thus most of us almost always do live drafts. I would question that that is true for the majority of leagues in ESPN and Yahoo! though.
Based on early years
this does have a ring of accuracy.
don’t know the numbers (don’t really care) but I would guess the number of public leagues, which I have not been a part of since 2003 my first year playing in any fantasy leagues, did tend to have a large number of no shows at draft time and of those that did show at the draft maybe 25% were gone after the first few rounds and by the end of the season only 3 managers were left.
by MasterOfPuppets on Dec 16, 2011 3:07 PM EST up reply actions
Well...
Cam and Jay and I went back and forth on this a few busting stones in October.
Inevitably, once we HAD THE SPECIFIC LEAGUE SETTINGS, we determined that my leagues were deeper (why else would anyone other than a complete idiot add, say, Jason Arnott?). I get the complete idiot part, btw. In an 8 or 10 team league with 18 or 21 player rosters, only an idiot would roster Arnott.
In 12 and 14 and 16 team leagues with 23 and 28 and 30 man rosters…it is very different. Suddenly, Arnott becomes a viable add.
IF ESPN really has deeper leagues (on average) that would explain why so many more players have 100% ownership. Just simple math.
Deeper Leagues
are where it’s at.
more challenging.
a lot more fun.
otw, you are just talking about rostering a core of superstars and then streaming whoever is hot.
my favorite league is one that has 14 teams, 28-man rosters.
start 4LW, 4C, 4RW, 5D, Util, 2G.
10 veteran keepers and 5 prospect keepers.
most recently, i added Bachman in that league.
it is exciting that a brand new player like that can have real value right away.
I agree
certainly make you look much deeper at players.
After 8 years of just for fun single year leagues I joined a similar league (check my fanpost)
which ultimately brought me here.
General knowledge was enough to at least feel like I could remain competitive.
Now I know without a doubt that nobody likes Lauri Korpikoski.
by MasterOfPuppets on Dec 15, 2011 5:48 PM EST up reply actions
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